Family Changes

Welcoming a new baby is full

Of changes no matter how many children you have or don't have. It's exciting! Older children may have many questions. The actual event is surrounded by a spiritual mystery. No one knows when it will happen, how long it will take, how it will happen, or have any knowledge of this new person. All we know is it happens! In God's perfect timing, all babies come and all pregnant women give birth! 

In addition to this new baby that we pray for always, my dear sweet husband is working hard to get a new job! Husband works in finance and to him, numbers are numbers. He has a job that pays our bills. He likes his co workers. But he doesn't like the industry or methods of business he currently works in. Husband is an amazing employee and a super hard worker. I have always been so proud of him and his diligence to excellence! People truly love him everywhere no matter what the situation. His job is no different. The Lord has blessed him with such favor and because of that our family has been blessed as well! Now he is craving a change and for good reason. He hates to leave us for 8 hours every day and we pray that someday, he can work from home possibly owning his own business. Having to leave daily and not enjoy your job is frustrating. He deserves to love what he does! Spending 40+ hours per week in an office, dealing with a company's finances, a person should enjoy why they are working! He has single handedly worked his resume up in a company he has wanted to work with for the last four years. He initially had a phone interview for a job within the company but it was not the job he was seeking. He asked about the job he was after an they referred him to that recruiter. They had an hour and half phone interview that went amazingly well! She passed him along to his, would-be boss and they had a phone interview that went even better! Scheduling with high priority within a company for three rounds of interviews is always complicated but they finally nailed down his final interview. It will be with three of the top people in the company on Friday starting at 1:00 and lasting until about 4:00. Husband is so excited! He prayed to just have an opportunity and he would do what he can to make it happen as far as he could control. 

Should my dear husband get this job that I have been praying so hard for him to get, it would mean a big move for our family. It would mean possibly buying a house for our family to make a home, which really excites my homemaker heart. It was also means moving right after our new baby comes. This makes a nesting pregnant mama feel uneasy. I keep turning it over to The Lord and trust in Him to work it all out! This Friday while husband has his interviews, I am going to tag along and scout the area. It seems it's mostly woodlands and very few stores and the like are available. The house we have found is about 15 minutes' drive from the nearest grocery store which is fine with me! I have my heart pretty set in this particular house and already dream house I can paint and decorate and make it a true forever home for my sweet family. We will e workin with our realtor to see three houses this Friday after the interviews so that we can have a good idea on the area and what's available. We definitely have to wait until an offer for the job comes in, which could be two more weeks, and husband will have to work through negotiations. Then we can place an offer on the house and providing the government gets their act together (we are using a USDA loan program), we will be able to close right before Christmas! Ideally, that is perfect timing to us! 

I have been working hard on praying for my husband and our marriage the last two months. Not just general praying but for specific prayers. We have a great marriage and I love my husband with all of my heart! He's my best friend, a wonderful protector, provider, and priest of our home. He leads me and guides me, along with comforting me and showing me grace I really don't deserve. He is extremely forgiving and loving. I truly don't deserve him but I am beyond thankful for him! I couldn't have dreamed a more perfect man to be my husband! Sure, we all have things about another person that drives us batty sometimes but in the end, he is everything I never knew I needed! He is strong where I'm weak and he's weak where I'm strong and we are a team. We're always accountable to one another and I can't imagine a marriage any other way! 

So as I pray for this wonderful man, who enables me to stay home and raise our family the way God has led us to, I have been trying to set my humanly, fleshly selfishness aside and focus on the blessing this would be to him! This would give him the job he has wanted for four years. It would put him in the country living like he's always dreamed of. It opens up an array of projects for him to do with our children. It affords him the ability to love where he's going daily and be passionate about the company he is working for. I desire this so much for him! I desire blessing and favor over him! 

For me, I truly desire to have a home of our own that we can make a homestead. I want the land for our children to have the freedom to be children and explore the world God has blessed them with. More than anything, I truly desire to live with my family in a place that is new for all of us. We have always talked about a great adventure in our lives and I am eager to see how God will use us in this possible great adventure! I must admit my selfishness, my sin, that I have always disliked the area we live in. Husband grew up here and that alone makes for loneliness, but there is some imaginary "club" that you are outcast from if you too did not grow up here. Husband and I got married young, and The Lord immediately blessed us with a baby before all of husband's friends and that separated me, especially, from being able to make deep connections with others because while they were out partying and having couple weekends, I was nursing a high needs baby every twenty minutes, twenty-four hours a day. And until you have had a child, the thought to offer new parents help never crosses your mind. I have had to give forgiveness and have grace in certain situations I haven't been able to understand. Now I realize that we are "black sheep" because we make different choices for our family that others feel is either insulting or wrong. We have made choices for our family that's BEST for our family, but others perceive that to be offensive. We are surrounded by all of husband's family and are always the ones going to visit. We've lived in this house for two years and have been visited by two people for about ten minutes. (Except husband's parents who have been such a blessing to us!) So, selfishly I want to move a bit father away so that we can meet new people together and enjoy new activities together as a family. I desire for us to grow and flourish with people none of us know and that know none of us! This selfish desire, I seek forgiveness for because I truly don't want to seek after something sinfully! More than anything, I seek after these changes to bless my dear family! 

 We have found a beautiful home that could be amazing for us! I am awaiting The Lord and trusting with sincere faith that He sees the desires of our hearts and will bless us according to His will for us. Never do we ever want to push for something that hasn't passed through the loving hands of our gracious Father. It seems silly to seek Him for things like this but I know He desires us to seek Him in all things. He has placed the desires in our hearts. Having boys and being married to a man, I know they desire adventure, exploration, man activities. As a woman and potentially a mother to daughters some day, I desire to make a home, to teach my children what a mother does for her family in dedication to the Word of God. And if I never have a daughter, I desire to show my sons what a Godly woman is and what to expect in the woman they choose to spend their lives with. I seek all of these things for my family because I seek righteousness and a life worshiping the King of Kings for my whole family! I am reading a new book that has me focusing on seeking God in every area of life, down to my responses and thoughts about simple things. I truly desire that every area of my life be an act of worship. That my humanistic tendencies never creep into my daily life. This is my job: my family. I seek the things that will bless them before anything else! Nothing prepares you for marriage and certainly, nothing prepares you for parenthood! As I feel I am navigating this path of life blindly, I know that while I feel in the dark sometimes, Jesus is my light and He guides me. My prayer is that I never overstep my Creator and that if it is not His will, that he removes the desires from my heart! I never want to desire what The Lord has not planned for me. 

So I pray, dear reader, that you will keep our family in your prayers! We face many changes in the upcoming weeks and months and while they can seem overwhelming at times, we are excited at the possibilities of this new life! Please pray that the desires of our hearts are answered with more than we could ask or think but also pray that if our desires are not the Lord's, that we understand without disappointment because God's ways are always higher than ours and His thoughts always higher than ours! Thank you!

Gardening and sin

Today has been a beautiful day! The weather is amazing! I love the fall time and it seems we are just teetering on the edge of 70 degree days and 50-60 degree nights. Since the day is so amazing and all of my household chores are done, at least enough I feel at ease to spend some time outdoors, that is what we did! I had a few flower beds to clean up, some plants to transplant, and I really wanted to get my patio gazebo somewhat bug proof! 

My oldest child, J, found a bow and arrow he really wants for his birthday. It costs $30. I so desperately want to get it for him but I am having to restrain because his kitten was his birthday present from us AND husband told him that he needed to either ask for it for his birthday, earn the money to buy it himself, or a combination of the two! In his effort to begin saving money, he decided to help me pull weeds and grass. He actually did a wonderful

job and I will probably give him $1. It literally took us 10-15 minutes! 

During our time weeding, J asked me why there are weeds and why they are brown and yucky. I explained how weeds are a product of sin and how sin is like weeds. He asked if weeds kill our flowers and I told him yes. We talked about how God made us beautiful and perfect like the flowers but when we allow sin in our lives, it's like the weeds and grass, it kills out our joy, beauty, and perfection and it makes us dry and brown. He was so perceptive and really understood what I was telling him. 

I know the Bible is perfectly cohesive and clear and concise in its presentation of the only true gospel. We should not add or take away from it. I believe this! It certainly was not my intention to do this in explaining sin to my child. In working   really hard on teaching our children about sin, their sin nature, and their need for salvation, I feel it is important to make the Gospel alive! It's important to me that my children can see God in their daily lives as they go about working necessary tasks and its my desire that everything they do can direct them back to the cross. Children don't typically mimic your advice but they do mimic your actions. My deepest desire in raising my children is that I lead them to a life of righteousness through the grace and mercy of my Savior, Jesus! We are called to be the primary educators of our children, not allowing others to pollute their holy temple. "¹⁸ Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ¹⁹ Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.²⁰ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates,²¹ so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth." (Deuteronomy 11:18-21) 

It is not anyone else's responsibility to teach my child of their Savior! It is solely the responsibility of a parent! Likewise, no one else should be teaching a child morality, obedience, or respect other than their parents! So far we have come away from children being raised in the home. Now children are being raised by tv, teachers, day care workers, nannies, iPods, and game systems. Let's vow to come back to the simplicity of God's Word and teach our children at all times of the day of the Lord's ways. Let us set and be the example to live by! This requires parents to be righteous and virtuous in their walk with Christ, yet when we fall short, as we will, let us show our children repentance and reconciliation. Did you know that you can have many different ministries but ALL OF US HAVE A MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION that Christ has given us and expects us to utilize?  ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creationhas come:^[a] The old has gone, the new is here! ¹⁸ All this is from God,who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.²⁰ We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹ God made him who had no sin to be sin^[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

What better gift can we give our children than to teach them the ways of The Lord when they rise, go about, come and go? This leads them to the cross and directs their eyes toward Jesus and I can't think of anything more I want my children to learn in their lives than their need for a Savior and their acceptance of Salvation!

One of those days!

I am having one of those days where no matter what my intention was when I awoke, it has been uphill from there! I woke, prayed, made beds, dressed children...just really purposes to have an awesome day enjoying my children! They have been such a joy to me. Maybe it's hormones, my increasing discomfort (from pulling a pelvic muscle), or just satan...maybe all three... It's been one of those day! The kind you want to tuck back into bed and have a do-over. The kind you could sit in your closet and cry in frustration. The kind that makes me re-think my purpose. Maybe I missed my calling and I need to look for a job outside of the home! That's the kind I day today has been! I'd like to yoga tonight but my torn or over-stretched pelvic floor is screaming just lying down, that that may not be the best idea. A pedicure sounds great, since I no longer can self paint my toe nails due to the watermelon I sport. But we are diligently working on sticking to our budget in effort to save and that spending was not planned! In this house, where I am outnumbered 4:1, there's no escape from the, "Mom can we... Can I... What are you doing?... We're hungry...We're thirsty...MAMA!!!  I need to go to the bathroom!" 'S! If I could have ice cream, I'd sneak away for a pint of butter pecan and lock myself away in my room with it! And considering how I feel about my day, the allergic reaction to the dairy might be worth it! 

It told Husband that I am going to stop

Praying and reading my Bible because the days I am diligent to set time aside for that are the days when everyone and everything goes crazy! Please know I won't be doing that but it's so frustrating! I know what's going on, though! God has a plan and satan sets out to ruin it! I've been through this before! I am just not as strong about taking the time recollect in the heat of the moment! In this is where my prayer life needs to be directed to!

The joys of today are:

We all awoke with breath in our lungs and right working bodies!

My children are healthy!

We face trials to overcome and defeat the plans of the enemy! 

We have a home.

My husband has a job that takes care of all of our needs and more.

We have freedom to worship!

Jesus lives!

Tomorrow is a completely new day! 

Praising God for His constant love when I am most unlovable and most undeserving. Praising Him for forgiving children who show me the need for a Savior through their sinful nature! I was softly prompted by God in my spirit today that one of the reasons He blesses us with children is to show us how sinful we are and to show us our desperate need for Him! This is so true in my life! I'm walking blindly on this path seeking righteousness and the only person who can help me is God! If you have one of these days, take comfort in that you are not alone!